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Experimental evolution meets marine phytoplankton

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 03:59 authored by Reusch, TBH, Philip BoydPhilip Boyd
Our perspective highlights potentially important links between disparate fields—biological oceanography, climate change research, and experimental evolutionary biology. We focus on one important functional group—photoautotrophic microbes (phytoplankton), which are responsible for ∼50% of global primary productivity. Global climate change currently results in the simultaneous change of several conditions such as warming, acidification, and nutrient supply. It thus has the potential to dramatically change phytoplankton physiology, community composition, and may result in adaptive evolution. Although their large population sizes, standing genetic variation, and rapid turnover time should promote swift evolutionary change, oceanographers have focussed on describing patterns of present day physiological differentiation rather than measure potential adaptation in evolution experiments, the only direct way to address whether and at which rate phytoplankton species will adapt to environmental change. Important open questions are (1) is adaptation limited by existing genetic variation or fundamental constraints? (2) Will complex ecological settings such as gradual versus abrupt environmental change influence adaptation processes? (3) How will increasing environmental variability affect the evolution of phenotypic plasticity patterns? Because marine phytoplankton species display rapid acclimation capacity (phenotypic buffering), a systematic study of reaction norms renders them particularly interesting to the evolutionary biology research community.

History

Publication title

Evolution

Volume

67

Issue

7

Pagination

1849-1859

ISSN

0014-3820

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2013 The Author(s)

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Climate change adaptation measures (excl. ecosystem)

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